Future of a Ruined Germany

As the advance into Germany continues and more and more of the devastation wrought by the Allied bombing planes is laid bare, there are three comments that almost every observer finds himself making.

The first is: 'The people at home have no conception of this.' The second is: 'It's a miracle that they've gone on fighting.' And the third is: 'Just think of the work of building this all up again...'

Bombing is not especially inhumane. War itself is inhumane and the bombing plane, which is used to paralyse industry and transport rather than to kill human beings, is a relatively civilised weapon. 'Normal' or 'legitimate' warfare is just as destructive of inanimate objects and enormously more so of human lives.

Moreover, a bomb kills a casual cross-section of the property. Whereas the men killed in battle are exactly the ones that the community can least afford to lose. The people of Britain have never felt easy about the bombing of civilians, and no doubt they will be ready enough to pity the Germans as soon as they have definitely defeated them. But what they have still not grasped - thanks to their own comparative immunity - is the frightful destructiveness of modern war and the long period of impoverishment that now lies ahead of the world as a whole.

To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilisation as a whole. It is not only Germany that has been blitzed. The desolation extends all the way from Brussels to Stalingrad. Where there has been ground fighting the destruction is even more thorough than where there has merely been bombing. Even in England we are aware that we need three million houses and that the chances of getting them within measurable time seem rather slender. But how many houses will Germany need, or the USSR, or Italy? If millions are to be deported to the victorious countries for reconstruction work, the recovery of Germany itself will be all the slower. The impoverishment of any one country reflects unfavourably on the world as a whole. It would be no advantage to turn Germany into a kind of rural slum.